Sunday, August 21, 2016

First, thanks to all the Rabid Puppies who got involved, at both the nomination and the voting stages. Things went very much according to form, and we have the SF-SJWs exactly where we want them at this point in time. Observe that after only two years, we already have them voting almost entirely in reaction to us, changing and complicating their rules, and awarding SJWs instead of merit in most categories.

Second, a few observations:

We were only able to burn two categories this year, but we reduced their choices to X or No Award in 5 other categories.

We got them to show the public their true colors and demonstrate that what the Hugo Award primarily means is public adherence to the SJW Narrative. Among the finalists no awarded this year: Jerry Pournelle, Larry Elmore, Toni Weisskopf, Moira Greyland, David Vandyke, Pierce Brown, and RazörFist. In most cases, the awards were given to people whose work is of observably lower quality. For example, the bestselling Pierce Brown, whose novel was not even nominated, wrote what was almost certainly, by any reasonable standard, the best science fiction novel published this year. Tough crowd, if even he's not worthy of mere consideration for Best New Author.

They did have the sense to avoid no-awarding Jim Butcher for a second straight year, though. Apparently Mr. Butcher's writing has improved a lot since last year.

They no-awarded a serious literary work about Gene Wolfe. Remember, these are the same people that have repeatedly claimed a blog post was "the Best Related Work" in science fiction that year. The contrast is informative.

The four fiction categories are increasingly becoming No White Male territory. The winners were: black woman, black woman, Asian woman, white woman, none of whom are bestselling or even very well-known authors. This is reliably indicative of increasing irrelevance. It won't be long before simply being a minority won't be enough and authors will have to be gay, blind, and crippled just to be nominated.

Contra all their unconvincing pretenses of delight, the nomination of "Space Raptor Butt Invasion" embarrassed them greatly. Chuck Tingle's masterpiece was no-awarded, exactly as I predicted.

We played kingmaker in Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form, where The Martian beat Fury Road, and in the John W. Campbell Award, where Andy Weir beat Alyssa Wong, thanks to our votes. And, of course, in Best Novel, where Jemisin's win was primarily a vote against us.

Neil Gaiman's acceptance was, characteristically, as classy as the man's himself. "It meant a lot to see Sandman Overture nominated for a Hugo award, and was disappointing to see that it had been dragged into the unfortunate mess that the pitiable people who call themselves Puppy had attempted to inflict on Worldcon and its awards. I would have withdrawn it from consideration, but even that seemed like it would have been giving these sad losers too much acknowledgement. I am proud it won, and prouder by far of the amazing work that JH Williams, Dave Stewart, Todd Klein, Dave McKean and Shelly Bond did. Thank you."

It's interesting to note that SJWs aren't celebrating the fact that more of the awards went to women this year than ever before, including all of the fiction categories.

All in all, despite the twin disappointments of Jerry Pournelle and Chuck Tingle not winning their categories, 2016 was a very good year; arguably better, from the strategic perspective, than last year's results. The Guardian's coverage of the awards is a pretty good summary for the SJW perspective. They still have no idea what's going on:

The winners of the 2016 Hugo awards have been announced, with this year’s choices signalling a resounding defeat for the so-called “Puppies” campaigns to derail the venerable annual honouring of science fiction literature and drama. As in previous years, there had been attempts by two separate groups, the Sad Puppies and the Rabid Puppies, to “game” the awards in favour of their preferred slates of works. Both groups claimed that science fiction has become dominated by a liberal, left-wing bias.

It's complete with a picture of the award-winning half-savage herself. It's quite clear most of these people cheering her Best Novel award have never read even a little of The Fifth Season, which makes George Martin's masterpiece of rape, death, and grimdark look cheerful and features a protagonist less likeable than Rand al'Thor and Ramsay Bolton combined.

As one reviewer of the 2016 Best Novel put it: "the main character became more and more unlikable as the tale goes on. She ends up in a gay/poly triad, has a child with the gay member of the group, and then essentially decides she's not cut out to be a mother and goes on and on about how she doesn't really care about the toddler, ditching him. All of this after a main hook where she's supposed to be frantically searching for yet another child who she seems for forget for years at a time."

That pretty well sums it up. Redshirts and Among Others were mediocrities, but The Fifth Season is a depth no Best Novel has seen since The Quantum Rose won the Nebula in 2000. The Impossibility of SJW Convergence is increasingly working in our favor. It won't be long it won't even need our paws on the scale to help the process along.

The Guardian claims 2016 was "a resounding defeat" for the Rabid Puppies, but then, they are an SJW institution and we know what SJWs always do. Consider a relatively neutral party's verdict, as declared back in April, by the Reverend 3.0.

If any other Castalia House work wins Best Related Work or second places to No Award, then the Rabid Puppies have obtained limited victory over the HugosBest Related Work
1. No Award
2. Between Light and Shadow: An Exploration of the Fiction of Gene Wolfe, 1951 to 1986, Marc Aramini, Castalia House

"A limited victory". That is a fair description.

We had over 200 people at the Rabid Puppy Hugo Party last night, which featured Dragon Award finalists John C. Wright, Nick Cole, and Brian Niemeier, as well as Hugo Award finalist Jeffro Johnson, and I think it's fair to say that a good time was had by most, if not all. One attendee even wrote to express his enjoyment of it.

Thank you for hosting The 2016 Hugo Awards this evening, which doubled as a most excellent and informative SFF convention panel. No one signaled virtue, no one posed, all was honest and free. I've never had the pleasure of witnessing a panel of guests quite like these before.

103 Comments:

Was anyone else reminded of the movies "Surrogates" and "Gamer" when the only reasonably-attractive albeit Asian) woman to go on stage went up to accept the Best Novel award on behalf of N.K. Jemisin? Also noticeable was how the post-menopausal white shoggoth announcing most of the awards was periodically (symbolically?) cooled-off by someone using a folding fan.

I'm only disappointed Chuck Tingle didn't win, the rest is drearily predictable. SJWs always lie of course but I can't understand the crowing when three of your recommendations won. Going over them again, you were also uncharacteristically kind enough not to recommend no-award in multiple categories.

If they're happy that mediocrity swept everywhere the puppies didn't bark then they're more pathetic than even I thought.

I literally laughed when I heard best novel went to the self admitted Token. I mean sure she's no John Scalzi but...

And the funny thing is that give her recent statements about being just a Token, I am willing to bet that;

(A) she knew in advance she was winning and

(B prime) she knew it had nothing to do with the quality of her work.

Which leads to (C) it's eating her up inside. I can almost but not quite feel sorry for her. She knows she'll never be certain how good or bad she really is. She will walk on quicksand all of her life as a writer.

The only other real take away that I can come up with is that the SJWs showed more discipline in voting on the down ballot than they did last year. That was to be expected, the hivemind hadn't really bestirred itself in that quarter before.

Sounds like it finally confirms that "HUGO AWARD WINNING NOVEL" is now a sort of inverse seal of quality, much like medieval people daubed a black cross on houses occupied by plague victims.

To be fair, I haven't read it, but neither have most of the folks who voted for it. Jemisin herself recently complained that, while she gets showered with affirmative action attagirls, markets are raciss.

There just isn't a sizeable body of readers willing to pay money to read depressing victim porn skiffy. Obviously because raciss, but also because Jemisin's stories sound about as fun as riding a bicycle uphill without a seat.

The most damning part is they will probably never be bestselling or even very well-known. A Hugo award used to be an indication there was some kind of quality to the book. You might not like it (everyone has different tastes), but you could be pretty comfortable that it wasn't just trash. That's not true any more, and people know it's not true any more.

Success in the art of conflict requires understanding the difference between what is desirable and what is possible. And no plan is ever executed perfectly; I did not anticipate two of our successful nomination candidates withdrawing; had they not, we would have had at least one more No Award category and an RP choice would have won Novella.

Success in the art of conflict requires understanding the difference between what is desirable and what is possible.

Absolutely. Also, not have been taught about playing the long game, but understanding, and seeing, its merits, it has been another painful lesson to be learned for someone like me that still struggles against instant gratification. But every step has been worthwhile. I envy those who bear the Spiritual Fruit of Patience.

Vox, thanks for the very enjoyable webcast. I was, admittedly, crushed when the voters denied the reality of love and did not give SRBI its deserved award. But the sheer mediocrity of so many of the winners is there for all to see. The awards went full SJW, which is nice proof of the claim (scoffed at by the Guardian) that the awards have an SJW bias. Truly, No Awarding "Best Related Work" was appalling. SF/F is doing an excellent job of ignoring the sexual predators among them.

Did Pournelle get no awarded or did he eke out above no award? Either way - a shame.

I'd like to see the stats on related work. Is hope that no award won out simply by plurality rather than by the percentages other Castalia works were shot sown (Gene Wolfe not worthy?)The thought of dealing with someone who no awarded Moiras story, or The Safe Space series, rather than at least give them a vote and acknowledge them, bothers me.

I think something like that would make a grave type marker for the buildings they once occupied. The Melbourne Age, very similar to the guardian, is losing money in buckets. It almost certainly will go out of print in the next twelve months. And, I am delighted at the idea of their collective upcoming unemployment.

Progressivism to the grave. They are going down with the ship. Moral superiority complexes will take them deeper than the Marianas trench. Transgender, divorce courts, feminism, open borders, gay bliss, global warming, free markets, relativism, islamophobiaphobia, anti christian bigotry of the highest order, they did it all. And are stone broke.

It is good that in there minds they won. They could have accepted the new normal where normal people get to influence the outcomes and simply carried on. Rather they have chosen the path which allows them to spin themselves into an SJW euphoria the crash from which a Zoloft Metamucil Prozac cocktail cannot alleviate. Expect the Dead SJW list to be much longer next year.

Jerry Pournelle finished in 6th of 5, behind No Award 951 to 766. Apparently we are not only supposed to believe that Ellen Datlow, Neil Clarke, John Joseph Adams, and Sheila Williams are all better short-form editors than the man who created THERE WILL BE WAR, but that he is not even worthy of consideration for such a prestigious award.

Best Related Work votes

1872 No Award412 Between Light and Shadow: An Exploration of the Fiction of Gene Wolfe86 Story of Moira Greyland77 Appendix N Book68 SJWs Always Lie30 Safe Space as Rape Room

According to an article I read in The Mumbai Times, when informed she had won the award, Jemisin first inquired as to "why they ain't no black rockets," then commanded an unspecified someone to "paint the bitch black then," before finally speculating "prolly made in raciss Australia, that would assplain it."

I didn't see Chuck Tingle's work on the final breakdown AT ALL!! What happened? I was certain that he was going to win, or at least place!

I am proud, proud, I tell you, to have lost to such an unusual author as the noted Noah Ward, and actually, even more pleased to have lost to the excellent "Between Light and Shadows." I lost to another Puppy! :D

Last night's RP Hugo Party webinar was very entertaining. First time I'd heard Nick Cole; his mention of the 500 year-old book that even JCW wasn't familiar with was surprising and intriguing. CH will be very busy indeed with two authors as prolific as Nick Cole and JCW.

Jeffro and Matt's feigned dissembling when Vox repeatedly tried to pin them down on the schedule for Jeffro's book was hilarious.

To me the most exciting news of the night was hearing what we can expect in the future with authors such as Brian, Nick, and JCW working with Castalia House.

Also a reminder: voting for the Dragon Awards ends Sept 1 so get those votes in for Brian, Nick & JCW.

Do you believe they are conscious of the disruption you have created or does the narrative blind them?

They are conscious of it, but they don't understand its significance. They are so busy trying to spin each little engagement as the Ultimate Victory for themselves and a Resounding Defeat for me that they have no idea how the ground is shifting beneath their feet.

I mean, look at how they are trying to claim that failing to single-handedly dictate the whole of the Hugo Awards and only determining 69 of the 81 nominations is a "resounding defeat" for me. What would victory look like?

Comment about Gaiman is meant to be sarcastic, right?

Yes. Gaiman is a confirmed SJW, he's just less visibly obnoxious. Every now and then, it shines through, though.

VD wrote:look at how they are trying to claim that failing to single-handedly dictate the whole of the Hugo Awards and only determining 69 of the 81 nominations is a "resounding defeat" for me. What would victory look like?

Determining 169 of the 81 nominations, all of which go on to win 6 of 5.

In summary, the Hugo awards once again grew more ridiculous, and petty new fools pranced across the stage to play their bit parts. Thank you for your work, everyone. Let's make them yet better again next year.

I refuse to believe that anything Jemison wrote could be a better novel than Seveneves.The Hugos are nearly DOA. If by some miracle I were to write something that got on one of their ballots and won I would refuse the award on general principal. @40 Dave:Yes: I'm rapidly getting to the point I can say, with considerable satisfaction, I have read everything Nick Cole has written. Along with JCW he is a must buy sight unseen.And, it was most interesting to hear the panelists on the webinar. Especially Mr. Wright and Mr. Cole. Both are naturals as speakers with proven credibility writing and speaking.Well done!Jethro and Matt: come on guys, you can do it.

What really bothers me is that disse86 came in dead last in the Fan Artist category. The guy is really good! (Incidentally, disse86's real name is Dennis Carlsson. It took me a few minutes of Google research to find that out. Apparently the Hugo committee were too lazy to put in the effort.)

Also, "My Little Pony" finishing with the worst result possible? Below "No Award", in fact, the equivalent of saying "this is worthless"? Somehow I don't think it'll endear too many bronies to the SJW crowd.

Editing the Castalia House blog takes up the lionshare of my efforts at the moment. It's been said that the vindication of my work is taking place in the pages of Cirsova. The discussion surrounding pulp sff has really taken off in the past few weeks. How to segue to that on THAT particular panel when people really only want to know the book release date...? Eh... not happening.

The point we danced around in the discussion last night that I really would have liked to weigh in on is that the elevation of Asimov, Clarke, and Heinlein to the status of "the big three" is basically a repudiation of Edgar Rice Burroughs. Post-Christian sff is also post-romance. If you look at what actually fired the imaginations of sff game designers in the seventies, I think you can really see how irrelevant the "serious" and "respectable" sff really was.

A case in point for that would be in Traveller, which also came up last night. Who defined the future for Marc Miller? It wasn't Asimov's Foundation. It wasn't Herbert's Dune. It was H. Beam Piper, E. C. Tubb, Poul Anderson, and Jerry Pournelle. Tubb wrote in the tradition of Burroughs and Brackett and provided the independent worlds, the blades, the passage types, and the drugs. Meanwhile, Anderson and Pournelle laid the groundwork for Miller's 3rd Imperium. Christianity was a first class element of its literary antecedent.

That was at the height of the New Wave.

Bringing this back around to the Puppies in general and to Castalia House in particular: the only person I've read that really has the same kind of punch as Edgar Rice Burroughs would be Larry Corriea. The only person I've read that is really doing anything remotely like Lord Dunsany is John C. Wright. Indeed, Wright writes as if the pulp era never stopped.

I see a lot of "Puppy" rhetoric that acts as if turning back the clock to Heinlein, Clarke, and Asimov is what we ought to be shooting for. But that's not what's actually going on here. Successful authors are actually regressing much harder than that!

The sort of people that would have endorsed this "Big Three" framework? That would be Joanna Russ.

I did a quick google, and read a few of the Hugo award reviews. There's a lot SJW crowing about the defeat of the badthinkers. One of the very heavy handed reviews was on some site called "The Verge" (first entry on the google). I won't link because it's one of those sites that hijacks the back arrow so you can't get out once you click. Nonetheless it's worth it to see the nauseating cover pic, and Soviet quality propagandizing. And I read the 'Catpic' story. Holy fucking cow. I mean- it was embarrassingly bad- worse than the Dinosaur Lovey tale from last year. If dreck like that is being awarded why even bother with the Hugo?

Just saw Hello Greedo's acceptance speech for the Fancast category on his Twitter feed. (Yes, I know this was a No Award category. Posting the video he prerecorded for his acceptance speech was his act of protest.) Worldcon doesn't realize that what they did to the Fancast category will have consequences. Sure, none of the nominees are likely to start an anti-Hugo campaign, but to audiences far larger than Worldcon and the readership of many of the writers in attendance, the Hugos are not for fans, only cliquish insiders.

I haven't read the Fifth Season (lack of interest in preachy gender theorist bs) but many of the reviews I read emphasized that the storytelling left a lot to be desired: unlikeable characters doing not a lot of anything, presented in a gimmicky 2nd person narration. Meanwhile I finished Seveneves in no time at all. You'd think the fact that the main heroes of the story were mostly female would have been enough to endear it to SJW readers, but I guess Stephenson being a white male was sufficient to condemn it in their eyes. Absolutely disgusting.

The pitch for Seveneves sounds like perfect SJW / feminist fodder. The story itself undercuts most of that. Either blatantly: our favorite cannibal or the borderline president - or less so: epicene tics, how genetics affect IQ, personality traits, etc.

Oh yeah, and heroic guys were a GOOD thing that one of the Eve's explicitly made sure stayed around.

Having MRK read it was masterful trolling, given the subsurface undercut the surface she agrees with.

The fact that The Fifth Season even won over Uprooted (written by someone on the same ideological side, and CLEARLY better in pretty much every way that counts) is insane to me. To be honest, I thought Uprooted was the shoo-in for the award -- and it was treated like it even by the SJW media (it has also won basically everything else it has been nominated for, running against the same crop of books) -- and that Vox's voting for it was just going to be a rhetorical 'we helped it win!' thing later on. But that was ACTUALLY enough for them to cut it off like it was a tumor, so you obviously still possess the power to drive increasingly more stupid books to Hugo 'wins,' even without the modest conservative media coverage we had last year.

The verge is someplace I keep in my RSS feed only to see what the SJW crowd is thinking. Reading the full stupid is avoided as it makes my eyeballs bleed. The handful of times I link it's via archive.is or similar.

From a rabbit's standpoint, the only possible vote was for Jemisin, given her history with Vox. In that mindset, the success of the women who led to his getting kicked out of the SFWA would cause him shame and gnashing of teeth.

@Vox: We should start a club for Hugo nominees who've finished 6th behind No Award. I'm picturing a swanky private clubhouse and smoking jackets with 6/5 embroidered above the breast pockets in thread of gold.

I enjoyed the party. I enjoyed the discussion about the publishing industry. It was also good to hear someone else played Squad Leader by themselves as a Teenager. I remember playing Russian Campaign and the old GDW folio games alone when no opponents were available

BoingBoing's SF-SJW-in-chief Cory Doctorow gave the game away in his post on the Hugos by describing the winners first and foremost not as great writers but as women of colour. No wonder Nora Jemisin didn't turn up to collect her award.

Also interesting to note that Doctorow originally referred to one winner as a "Phillipino person" but stealth edited it later to "Filipina person". LOL.

n EPH. They did a run of the numbers for EPH if it had been used this year. If I understood, what little I could see of it and the quick look at the 1 or only 5 copies they printed out for over 200 people at the final business meeting, Rabid Puppies would have won just about everything. The one bit of data they didn't examine was the Dramas, short and long (movies/tv), because it was such a huge amount of data to crunch in just a few hours last night.

I was really astonished at that result. I really wish I could have snagged one of those print outs. There is supposed to be a .pdf of that data run but I haven't found it yet.

@91 She went into the vapors in her acceptance speach. Oh I'm such a minority and it's so nice to get the nod to diversity and on and on... ugh. And she was ugh too physically, had these huge tattoo wings on her back over her shoulder blades. NO, I wasn't THAT close but her back was shown on the big screens and she had really short hair so it was hard to miss.I still don't get the unicorn reference they mentioned in their talks when Uncanny won that category.

I haven't read the Fifth Season (lack of interest in preachy gender theorist bs) but many of the reviews I read emphasized that the storytelling left a lot to be desired: unlikeable characters doing not a lot of anything, presented in a gimmicky 2nd person narration. Meanwhile I finished Seveneves in no time at all. You'd think the fact that the main heroes of the story were mostly female would have been enough to endear it to SJW readers, but I guess Stephenson being a white male was sufficient to condemn it in their eyes. Absolutely disgusting.